During the COVID-19 pandemic, hygiene theater has often been performed by retail businesses in an effort to ease concerns of potential customers, while actually doing little to mitigate the risk of contracting SARS-CoV-2.
[1][2][3][4][5][6][7] One of the first written uses of the term was in a March 6, 2020, blog post by Bob Cooney, a recreational virtual reality consultant,[8] in which he said that VR-arcade operators should "practice hygiene theater" for customers as the COVID-19 pandemic began.
[10] On July 27, 2020, Derek Thompson, a staff writer for The Atlantic, used the term when referring to hygiene measures being taken during the COVID-19 pandemic that have done little to reduce the spread of COVID-19 and have provided a false sense of security.
[1][3] Measures taken against COVID-19 that have been referred to as hygiene theater include deep cleaning (aside from in hospitals), temperature checks, plexiglass barriers, and the spraying of disinfectants by humans and robots.
[12] However, amidst the general reopening of the US, the specifics of what practices were done were varied enormously, as companies updated rules and continued to adapt to customer behavior.